


So Like Fear

by executrix



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Post-Serenity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-06
Updated: 2011-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:06:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Serenity, life goes on, but nothing is resolved. Or, nothing is resolved, but life goes on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Like Fear

1  
Zoe was an observer of hierarchies. She was less impressed by licenses and qualifications and papers, but piloting was something else again. Even as a passenger, she wouldn't have wanted to ride at the mercy of the seat of a crazy girl's pants. What clinched it for her was that Simon, who was smart and odd rather than off-the-scale brilliant and crazy, knew better than to muck with the controls. When it was Wash's chair, it was just…an insult.

So it was one of the hardest things she had to do in a hard life, but Zoe was the one who went into town. Nobody noticed. Noticing was on hiatus. She didn't think that the Labor Exchange office would be any help, but she had to try. That was the first thing she ticked off the list. She didn't have any local contacts, so she had nobody to ask.

There were a couple of coffeehouses, but she was relieved not to find any prospects there. She wasn't sure she'd want to fly behind a pilot who went to coffeehouses. Same thing for the bookstores. There was a street of little shops full of half-corroded motors and speckled wires, that might have been good.

But, as Zoe expected, she struck gold in a tavern. It wasn't a dive, just a place where a pilot could take a 2 pm breakfast of Limburger and lager amid friendly, non-sullen silence. All the papers were in order, and the pilot quickly understood, without too much palaver that someone in authority might have overheard, the **special** nature of Serenity. Zoe used mostly the last of their cash to pay the first week's salary. They had fuel, rice, protein, and no plans. Inara had offered to sell some of her jewelry at the next stop, wherever that might be.

"Open up, Mal," Zoe said. "It's me. It's us."

The crew's first introduction to the new pilot was a cloud of smoke from a cigar that even Jayne considered a false economy.

"Got us a new pilot," Zoe said. "Licenses and papers and everything. Give 'em to Mal, neh? He's the fella at the front of the wedge."

What most people noticed next was the extent of the crude tattoos displayed by the thin, sleeveless undershirt. Jayne enjoyed the nearly-unobstructed view of one helluva pair of tits. Jayne figured that she was just trying to ignore 'em, maybe they'd go away, they didn't fit in with the boots and the crewcut and all.

"Evgenya," the pilot said, sticking out her hand in forthright manly fashion.

"Evgenya what?" Kaylee asked, craning to look at the papers now in Mal's shaken hand. Some of the filled-in lines said "Evgenya Evgenova," but mostly just had the one name.

"Oh, you want to know my father's name? You don't need to know anything about that fuckpig, mostly I try to forget him myself."

2  
Simon opened the hatch and walked down the ladder to Mal's cabin. He stopped and leaned against the ladder, draped as decoratively as a bead curtain, as Mal would have noticed given any observation just then, or the predilection to be enticed.

"'A thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I,'" Mal said.

"That's very…literary. We were going to send someone to bring you breakfast in bed, but we decided it wasn't good for you."

"Oh? Was there a palace coup and nobody told me about it? Make sure they don't break your balls with too much of that gorram voting."

"Certainly not," Simon said guiltily. "Come on. Do that sexy exactly-two-days-of-stubble thing to your face and put on your pants and come to the kitchen before the powdered eggs and hardtack decline from their peak of dewy freshness."

"Don't bother," Mal said.

Simon looked down from halfway up the ladder. "Nature abhors a vacuum, Mal. Want to put me out of my vocation of loving the insane?" He climbed the rest of the way up and closed the hatch and leaned his forehead against the door. "It's what I **do** , darlin'."

3  
"Oh, good, I'm glad you're here," Inara said, gesturing Zoe down onto the couch, and draping a hank of cashmere yarn spanning Zoe's hands. Inara rolled the yarn into a ball. Zoe's eyes followed the ever-growing sphere, and the four that followed, without another word exchanged. Then Inara brewed some tea.

"See you tomorrow night," Inara said.

4  
"Heya," Evgenya said. She had moved all the furniture in what was Book's cabin.

"I came to see how you're settling in," Inara said.

{{So that's what they're calling it these days.}} "Thanks. It's fine. This could be a good berth."

"They're all good people. In their way."

"What you do…" Evgenya said. "You make a living, letting men fuck you, right?"

Something made Inara say, "Not just men!"

"Good to know."

"Evgenya, what Mal…what you don't understand, is that what Companions provide is not simple sex. Which, after all, is not the hardest thing to find! But we can provide integration. Healing. We know what people need, what they need to see, to feel."

"Yeah? And who takes care of you?"

"Our training makes us independent, complete in ourselves…"

"Yeah, yeah, sure. Hey, is the Cap your man or what? I don't really get the energy that flows between you two."

"He is not and was not my man because he's **impossible**! But that doesn't mean that my feelings for him aren't…and that he doesn't feel as much as he's capable of…"

"Yeah, my mom liked to spend all those long lonely nights reading pulpy love trash. Gave her excuses when my dad came home mean drunk. Sometimes if he used his fists he'd stump up for a box of chocolates, but usually it wasn't even a bunch of paper flowers. Glad I didn't have that _go-se_ going to my head, I didn't bother to read it, not while there were engineering manuals around."

5  
"I am, you know," River said. "All right."

"I'm…well…not sure. We're still figuring out the parameters of your powers. And the extent of the damage. If there's still any role I can play in helping you."

"You're just jealous."

"I know I am. I thought I could make you better myself. And faster. And with an order of magnitude fewer casualties. River, I think we should stay here a while," Simon said, hating himself for begging. "Six months. Until we see what happens. Get {{Mal's}} our feet under us. Please. There's work for you here. You can keep the books, we need to get the expenditures into order. And teach me tae kwon do."

River swirled around (she was sitting on the table) and leaned forward, her fingertips on Simon's forehead, thumbs touching the bags under his eyes. When he closed his eyes, his eyelashes were soft and black against the drained skin.

"Yeah," she said. "You're, like, a punch magnet."

6  
It was Evgenya's idea—the way they decided which of the now-diminished number of chairs to sit in, was to draw numbers out of a pouch Inara made out of a scrap of brocade. Kaylee made the disks, numbered 1-7, on the engine-room lathe. She was going to make some real chips for TallCard, ("dishes" "brightwork" "bathroom floors" "defrost chiller") but it would be a while before anyone could stand to play again.

River put a big plate of fried wontons on the table. "Jenny and I got really bored, so we made these," she said. "Mal, it's all right, I asked Kaylee and she said the oil wouldn't go to waste, she could hydrogenate it and use it in the secondary booster."

Inara smiled. "Thank you, that was very kind of you. It must have taken hours to make so many…"

"We wanted to make something nice for you, doll," Evgenya said. Inara's smile softened and retreated into her eyes, and she looked at Evgenya.

"Jesus!" Jayne said. "'Cept for you an' me, Zoe, this is nothin' but a freak show. Crazy folk and…"

"Everybody's family embarrasses them, Jayne," River said, smoothly stepping on his line.

Zoe put one hand on Evgenya's arm, to her left at the table, the other on River's arm, to her right. "Jayne, only thing you 'n' me got in common is breathin', and we all know how reversible that is."

Simon was smart enough to leave it at a raised eyebrow.

7  
Mal wrapped himself in the blanket he'd sneaked out of the locker in the cockpit, that time he hung back in the shadows of the corridor until Zoe finally crawled out to collapse into bed. He was too ashamed to face her. He didn't hate the Alliance or its soldiers any more than he could handle. No, the acid that etched all his images was the Browncoat command, the cowards who pulled out and left them to die without the backup they needed.

Now that he'd Zoe into hell and only halfway back out again, he hated thinking that that was the way she felt about him. But that was his punishment, and he took it.

8  
The chorus that rang in Zoe's head were some of the first words she ever heard Book say. He'd been away, in the Abbey, all those years. Now it was his time to walk the world awhile. She figured that sooner or later, she'd be ready to do the same. Ready to go to some of those planets where some of Wash's ashes might have spread, when they let them soar before they put her wedding video on the empty grave.

She wondered who the Shepherd had been mourning.

9  
"This is something Inara and I have been discussing," Simon began, diffidently.

"It was your idea," Inara said traitorously. "You explain it."

Evgenya squeezed her hand.

"The purpose of this meeting," Simon said, "Is to get us back to work as soon as practicable. We…I need the sense of the crew as to how important it is that what we do be actually illegal."

"The bobble-head dolls weren't illegal," Inara said sweetly. "And that was one of our better scores."

"Whose side are you on, anyway?" Mal growled.

"Evgenya's."

"Whoo!" Jayne said.

"All right," Simon said. "We have individuals aboard with lawful and saleable skills. At a minimum, Companion arts and medicine. What I'm suggesting is, that we give Inara priority as to where we'll go. Theoretically she'll work one week out of every four, but if she has additional appointments, I propose that we stay around to fit her schedule. Because Inara has very, very, extremely kindly offered to place all of her earnings into a common pool. From which we will all get equal shares. Jayne, that means you get fourteen percent, which is a significant advance on your current ten percent."

"Well, I'm likin' that part," Jayne said. "Do I get to watch her earnin' my money?"

There was a chorus of negation.

"That don't sit too well with me," Mal said. "Living off the immoral earnings of a woman…"

"Hell, Mal," Jayne said. "Don't see why bein' a pimp's any worse than armed robbery."

"It's a question, what's man's work," Mal said tightly.

"We have more men than women now," River chipped in.

"Depends on how you count Jenny," Jayne said.

"Half and half?" Evgenya said.

"To return to the matter at hand," Inara said, too angry to keep anger invisible, "Mal, try not to be a bigger fool than strictly necessary. I will be your friend and love you as long as you don't make it impossible. And a little beyond, but not forever."

Mal flinched, knowing that hearing it at last was the seal of losing her. He almost wished her away again because then he still had his delusions. But it was part of his punishment, too. And he knew what the Shepherd would say—that it would scour away more of the sizeable pile of his sins.

"Si, go on and tell them the rest," Evengya said. "I mean, you're going to be doing most of the work."

"The rest of the time, we'll pick a place that's beneath the radar, where the populace have some funds, but where there's no hospital or formal clinic. We'll stay for a few weeks, do some elementary public health work, give inoculations, simple surgical procedures, basic medical care. Work out of whatever building they can lend us. Maybe later on, buy some tents, mosquito netting, for the most primitive settlements…well, they need us the most, but they don't have the money so…We'll have cash and drugs, so Zoe, Jayne, we'll need you to maintain a visible public relations presence out front, make sure we don't get too popular. Kaylee, River, you're the public health outreach officers."

He held up a small flour sack, with an off-register print in red and green. "You'll be issued with this bag of candy…"

"Hey!" Jayne said. "I was savin' that for Christmas!"

"Payback for my purple shirt, you son of a whore. As I was saying, candy, leaflets, and ten gallons of bleach. If you cross the path of a small child, distribute a piece of candy to him or her and talk up the clinic. Adults, give out leaflets. Anything else, douse it in bleach. River, if you have any problems triaging, ask Kaylee or err on the side of false negatives."

"He ain't allowed to call me that, is he, Mal?"

Mal shook his head. {{They come and fetch me out for **this!** >}} "Simon you got no call to insult Jayne's mama, good woman far's I know anything of it. Now, you called him a goatfucker, wouldn't be out of line."

"Let the record be corrected to read…"

"Yeah? Am I allowed to call him a cocksucker?" Jayne said.

"How long is the statute of limitations?" Simon asked.

"Everybody, just shut it. This ain't helpin'" Mal said. "Some of us got work to do, some of us got nerves to break down. Forget somebody, son?"

"Mal, you've seen mobile hospitals. There's never a moment of the day when more pairs of hands wouldn't be useful."

"Don't you go countin' on me too heavily. Blood, pus, screams. Had my fill and plenty."

"That's all right," Simon said. "My turn."

10  
Mal dipped the black bishop in his hand and shrugged.

"Jesus, Reynolds, you're lousy at this," Evgenya said, putting away the white pieces.

"Yeah, that's what everybody says about my strategic ability," Mal said. "That's why this ain't a democracy."

11  
Kaylee waited until she found Simon alone, sitting at the dining table going over the spreadsheet River had made up, showing the best price quotes for 40,000 doses of oral broad-spectrum antibiotic/antivirals to be sourced from sellers who weren't too particular about seeing a dispensing license.

"Simon," she began, "That time you said…you know, when we started in to…well, you was lyin', weren't you?"

"In my **teeth** , Kaylee."

"Why'd you do that when things looked so bad?"

"Because they did, Kaylee. If I could say something to make you feel better, when things were so desperate…"

"But it wasn't what you really wanted for yourself."

"No. But I was obviously in the home stretch of living fast, dying young, and leaving a good-looking corpse, and if I told Mal what I really felt, his breaking my jaw would just ruin the whole thing."

"But you did it with me. A bunch of times."

"Oh, I've gotten some mixed to positive reviews of my…equipment…in the past, but no one ever ascribed life-saving powers. Really, I was flattered. What man wouldn't be? And I like you. You have a kind heart. And you're good at what you do. And you're pretty. Just not, in my own idiosyncratic frame of reference, attractive."

"You lied to me," Kaylee said, and walked away. {{He never did know what to say to me, smart as he is and all. Guess I should tell myself that makes me some kinda important Mystery.}}

12  
"Here," River said, handing Mal a thick handful of pages. "We buried the bound-up part with him, but maybe these will make more sense."

"I doubt it," Mal said. "Zoe's spent a power of time up in the cockpit, readin' that big Triumphal Prophecies book with the white leatherette cover that Elder Gommen gave us—didn't have much cash but he surely had lots of copies of that—and I don't think she got a lick of sense out of that either. But hey, thanks for tryin' to cheer me up, joinin' me in my failures."

13  
Evgenya broke off what she was saying—luckily they hadn't laughed for a couple of minutes—when Zoe came in. "Hey," she said, touching Zoe's shoulder and falling silent.

This time, Zoe wound the yarn into a ball while Evgenya held it, and Inara knitted a mostly-air shawl from the yarn already wound.

14  
Praying for the dead? Jayne felt no need to adopt the meme sweeping through the ship. Hell, that's what the Shepherd had been up to, last time they saw him up on his feet. Jayne didn't see the point of it. There were more dead folks than live ones and you're a long time dead, so why dwell on it? He couldn't figure out why Mal and Zoe hadn't learned that, back in the day when they got their stiffs with a professional discount.

15  
The obi was taut against his waist, but even so, Simon always felt freer in Sihnonese dress than in Londinian. He ran his finger along one of the thin raised gold stripes holding apart the wider stripes of plum, pistachio, and cream. The silk slid against his just-dried, still-warm skin.

"The House Madrassa at Three Hills welcomes you," Julian Tsing-Loh Anh told him. "Inara was my guildguru, you know." He poured a cup of first-flush white tea. "You look cold."

"Always. Primarily metaphysically," Simon said. "Thank you." Julian's sage-green robe, printed with stylized fans, made his smooth apricot skin glow. The more perceptive of his clients noticed the amusing cut sleeves.

"I…" Simon began, "I mentioned this to your House Priestess. I'll try to control it, but it's not…entirely up to me."

"There's more than one reason for seeking union with one of us," Julian said. "Celebration, but surcease as well."

"Hold my hand," Simon said, stretching it out. "Please. I feel that I'm being corroded from the outside, with rage. And eaten up inside with grief."

In answer, Julian held up one of the precious cups to the light, which gleamed through the tough thin shell.

16  
"Simon, I'm tellin' you, I gotta have it," Kaylee said.

Mal, nearly walking in on the conversation, froze behind the door to the kitchen, a ghost again in his own ship.

"Kaylee, I'm not denying you for my own amusement, you know, we simply haven't got the money for…"

"'Nara bought **two** new dresses last month."

"That's working capital, Kaylee, you know that. She got big discounts from the designers so they can say a Companion wears their clothes. And she didn't even like the claret-colored one, but she'll need that if she gets an invitation to the Senatorial Enclosure at the Saint Martha's Cup. And if she **does** get an invitation, well, that'll be a big score, and we all get equal shares of that. And she'll get invited back."

"And she won't be able to **go** back if we're dead in the water because the RAID for the portside astrogation sensor array crashed. I can't build my own picotech chipset without a cleanroom…" (she held out her fingernails, which were as glossy as Inara's but not from lacquer). "Couldn't do the programming anyway. River maybe could, but we can't do the fab so it don't matter…"

Simon closed his eyes. "Look, I'll…try. Tell you what. I'll try to borrow the…what is it, eight hundred platinum?--from River. She's got the first nickel she ever made."

"Try ain't good enough, Simon," Kaylee said. She gave him a little peck on the cheek and went back to work.

Mal covered his entrance with an elaborate pretense of pouring a cup of coffee. "Didn't sound like much of a lover's quarrel," he said. "Hey, we got milk in the milk! Shiny!"

"Inara booked a three-day overnight," Simon said in reverse order. "No, it wasn't."

"Because of?"

"Yes," Simon said.

Mal looked down into the coffee mug. "A man is what he is, Simon, and he can't change that even if he wanted to which I don't necessarily. But never think that don't mean I'm grateful for what you done."

Simon stood up. "Just go back to being what you are, Mal. That'll have to suffice." He glided one fingertip between the eyebrows and down Mal's nose, then turned and went back to the medbay.

17  
"Whoo!" Kaylee said, knocking back a tiny cup of warm booze. The cup was instantly refilled from a square stoneware bottle. "That's…pretty brutal."

"Kampei!" Julian said, finishing his own drink. "That's a pretty blouse, Kaylee."

"Nice shirt, too. Is it real petrospun?" Kaylee asked. She let her fingertips just bounce against the white shirt. It contrasted starkly with the black velvet trousers that were, she noted, tight enough that Mal would approve…well, if he looked at boys' pants, that is. She emptied the cup again, conscientiously, wondering if her Ma would tell her to drink up, children out on the Rim are sober.

"Yes. The trousers are silk though. Oh, go ahead, feel it. We're friends." Kaylee's fingers played with the fabric that caressed her right back, and slid her hand, exploring the long muscles of the slim leg so warm beneath her fingers.

"I'm sorry to hear trade is so bad," Kaylee said. "We're doing all right for ourselves, didn't think you folk would ever run into trouble."

"Oh, you know…events…" Julian said vaguely. "Have another!" he said, putting the re-filled cup into her free hand.

In point of fact, Inara had paid two-thirds of Julian's present herself, and had to invoke Guild law to make him take the money instead of waiving the charge. Even a third of Julian's fee emptied out Kaylee's savings account, but Companions, like psychoanalysts, believe that their services can only be helpful if they are expensive enough to be valued by the users. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

"Why don't we play a game? If I spill some of my drink on my nice white shirt—oh, look, like that!—you get to kiss me. And if you spill some, I get to kiss you!" Soon, he was rewarded with a hard-to-hold armful of giggling girl.

Inara had joked with her apprentice about adding "washing clients' feet" to her resume. Julian wondered if he should add "catering to clients who cry and call me Mal" as a specialty.

18  
"Kaylee did a real good job on that air filter," Jayne said. It was true—you couldn't tell that there'd been an hour and a half's worth of beer and cigars in Book's old room. Evgenya didn't believe in ghosts, and ghosts don't hold much with strangers.

Evgenya had nearly as large a collection of girlie pictures as Jayne, but hers had more artistic lighting.

"She's a damn fine mechanic," Evgenya said. "Cute, too."

"Yeah, if you don't mind Mal cuttin' your nuts off with a rusty knife," Jayne said, taking a pawn. "Check."

"I'm a grownup," Evgenya said. "I can look at a cute girl and not think I have to fuck her." She slid her bishop out of harm's way. "You're better at this than Mal is."

"Well, who in the damn 'verse ain't?"

19  
"Awww," Kaylee said, when they loaded back in from three weeks on another nowhere moon. "We didn't have no cleft palates! I like those the best, the way you just work on 'em and next thing you know the kids looks normal and they can eat with nothin' fallin' out of their nose and all."

"We had three fistulas, though," Simon said cheerfully. "Those are **my** favorite. I mean, you have to despair that in this day and age they would even happen, but—boom—you go right in there, it's an easy repair, and the result—well, difference of night and day. Giving someone her whole life back."

"Plenty of amputations," River said, and they all groaned. They **hated** amputations. "Iron Mercy, that above-the-knee from the combine accident—five weeks ago!--that was disgusting!"

Jayne grimaced.

River handed Mal a wheat-straw basket of produce from the market. "What is this stuff and what'm I meant to do with it?"

"Some kinda vegetables," Kaylee said. "The big red ones, I think you chop up the stalks and stuff 'em in the leaves with some rice and onions. Ask Evgenya."

"What do you think, Kaylee?" Simon asked. "We can't handle the bioelectronics for a really good prosthesis, but do you think you could cook up something mechanical? Ceramplas outside, a titanium strut, maybe next pass back there—where were we?"

"Murdock A-13," River said.

"…the stump'll be healed, OK, if we managed to conk out that tissue necrosis, I mean, a combine accident on a moon that uses night soil…"

"Just 'cause you're havin' fun, don't give you warrant to turn the stomachs of them what ain't," Mal said. "Bizui! Stat! And that's an order!"

**Author's Note:**

>  _No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear._ C.S. Lewis, "A Grief Observed"


End file.
